"It was a bad year," said Derek Eisentrout, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Morristown. "It was an incredibly dynamic year. The highs were higher, the lows were lower. And there was a lot more of everything."

Tittle said Hamilton County had another first -- the first year ever to receive two presidential disaster declarations for tornado damage.

The first was a public assistance declaration to help cities and the county pay for response to two tornadoes that hit Signal Mountain and Red Bank at the end of February.

The second declaration was to help public agencies and individuals after the April 27 disaster.

"This is now the second year in a row we have experienced extreme weather in Tennessee," Flener said, noting that the May 2010 flood in Middle Tennessee was most costly disaster in Tennessee's history to that point at $4 billion.

Time will tell what the five presidential disasters declared in Tennessee in 2011 for tornadoes and flooding will cost. Those disasters involved more than two-thirds of Tennessee's 95 counties, he said.

Flener expects more extreme weather in 2012.

"The National Weather Service is predicting higher-than-average rainfall for Tennessee again in 2012, as we'll see a second straight year of La Nina influence on the U.S.'s weather impact," he said.

"So what we call wacky or extreme weather now, may become the new norm for weather in Tennessee, the Southeast and the U.S." Flener said.